fraudster

President Trump this week pardoned a San Diego-area woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who shortly wound up back in prison for a different scheme.

In 2016 a federal jury convicted Adriana Camberos and her then-husband, Joseph Shayota, on conspiracy charges in connection with an elaborate scheme to sell millions of bottles of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy shots in the United States. She was sentenced to 26 months in prison and served barely more than half of that time when Trump commuted her sentence in 2021.

But her freedom proved fleeting. In 2024, Camberos and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case that involved lying to manufacturers to purchase wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings then instead sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.

To avoid detection, prosecutors said, Camberos and her brother committed bank and mail fraud. Prosecutors said the pair made millions in illegal profits, funding a lavish lifestyle that included a Lamborghini Huracan, multiple homes in the San Diego area and a beachside condominium in Coronado.

The decision to pardon Camberos came amid a flurry of such actions from Trump in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC and the former governor of Puerto Rico, who pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker.

The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many for defendants in criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. The moves come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Among those granted relief of their prison sentences are defendants with connections to the president or to people in his orbit.

Administration officials have not offered a public explanation for Trump’s decision to pardon Camberos. But a White House official, speaking on background, said the administration felt it was correcting an earlier wrong by pardoning Camberos, arguing that she and her brother were unfairly targeted and subject to a political prosecution under the administration of former President Biden. The official alleged the Biden administration targeted the Camberos family in response to the earlier conviction and that the conduct was a typical part of the Camberos’ wholesale grocery business.

Ahead of her first conviction, authorities said Camberos and her then-husband operated a company called Baja Exporting, which contracted with the distributors of 5-Hour Energy to sell the product in Mexico. However, the company then altered the goods’ Spanish-language packaging and labeling and instead distributed them in the U.S. at well below the company’s normal retail price, prosecutors alleged.

That relabeling effort involved 350,000 bottles sold from late 2009 through 2011 at 15% below normal retail prices, according to authorities. The couple then took things a step further, joining with other defendants in Southern California and Michigan to manufacture a bogus concoction bottled and labeled to mimic the authentic product, according to court records. The scheme transformed the following year into one that produced and marketed several million bottles of counterfeit drink that was mixed under unsanitary conditions by day laborers, prosecutors said.

Six other defendants pleaded guilty to similar charges in connection with the scheme.

It wasn’t clear whether any consumers were harmed. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 5-Hour Energy as a dietary supplement, has investigated at least eight deaths and a dozen life-threatening reactions involving energy shots before and during the time period of the counterfeiting.

The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.

Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also received pardons from Trump.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

DENVER — Just in time for the holidays, President Trump has issued another of his dubious pardons. Or rather, make that a “pardon.”

This one comes on behalf of a former Colorado elections official serving a nine-year sentence for election fraud.

“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure our elections were fair and honest,” Trump said in a typically gaseous, dissembling post on social media.

“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections,” the president went on. “Today I am granting Tina a full pardon for her attempts to expose voter fraud in the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”

Actually, Peters’ crime was conspiring to let an unauthorized person access voting equipment as part of a nutty scheme to “prove” the November 2020 balloting was bogus, then lying and covering up her illegal actions.

And she’s not likely to leave jail anytime soon.

That’s because Trump has precisely zero say over Peters’ fate, given the former Mesa County elections chief was convicted on state charges. The president’s pardon power — which Trump has twisted to a snapping point — extends only to federal cases. If we’re going to play make-believe, then perhaps Foo-Foo the Snoo can personally escort Peters from prison and crown her Queen of the Rockies.

That’s not to suggest, however, that Trump’s empty gesture was harmless. (Apologies to Foo-Foo and Dr. Seuss.)

Some extremists, ever ready to do Trump’s malevolent bidding, have taken up Peters’ cause, using the same belligerent language that foreshadowed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, threats have come from some of the very same thugs whom Trump pardoned in one of the first shameless acts of his presidency.

“WE THE PEOPLE ARE COMING TO BREAK TINA PETERS OUT OF PRISON IN 45 DAYS,” Jake Lang, a rioter who was charged with attacking police with an aluminum baseball bat, said on social media. “If Tina M. Peters is not released from La Vista Prison in Colorado to Federal Authorities by January 31st, 2026; US MARSHALS & JANUARY 6ERS PATRIOTS WILL BE STORMING IN TO FREE TINA!!”’

(Capitalization and random punctuation are apparently the way to show fervency as well as prove one’s MAGA bona fides.)

Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys extremist group whom Trump also pardoned, shared a screenshot of the president’s social media post. “A battle,” Tarrio said, “is coming.”

Trump’s pretend pardon is not the first intervention on Peters’ behalf.

In March, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to free her from prison, saying there were “reasonable concerns” about the length of Peters’ sentence. The judge declined.

In November, the administration wrote the Colorado Department of Corrections and asked that Peters be transferred to federal custody, which would presumably allow for her release. No go.

Earlier this month, apparently looking to up the pressure, the Justice Department announced an investigation of the state’s prison system. (Perhaps Peters was denied the special “magnetic mattress” she requested at her sentencing, to help deal with sleep issues.)

Like any child, when Trump doesn’t get his way he calls people names. On Monday, he set his sights on Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis — “a weak and pathetic man” — for refusing to spring Peters from state prison.

“The criminals from Venezuela took over sections of Colorado,” Trump said, “and he was afraid to do anything, but he puts Tina in jail for nine years because she caught people cheating.”

The only true part of that statement is that Colorado does, in fact, exist.

While Trump portrays Peters as a martyr, she is nothing of the sort.

As Polis noted in response to Trump’s “pardon,” she was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and convicted by a jury of her peers — a jury, it should be noted, that was drawn from the citizenry of Mesa County. The place is no liberal playpen. Voters in the rugged enclave on Colorado’s Western Slope backed Trump all three times he ran for president, by margins approaching 2-to-1.

If Peters’ sentence seems harsh — which it does — hear what the judge had to say.

Peters was motivated not by principle or a search for the truth but rather, he suggested, vanity and personal aggrandizement. She betrayed the public trust and eroded faith in an honestly run election to ingratiate herself with Trump and others grifting off his Big Lie.

“You are as privileged as they come and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame,” Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters in a lacerating lecture. “You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

Peters remains unrepentant.

In petitioning Trump for a pardon, her attorney submitted nine pages of cockamamie claims, asserting that Peters was the victim of a conspiracy involving, among others, voting-machine vendors, Colorado’s secretary of state and the Venezuelan government.

To her credit, Peters has rejected calls for violence to set her free.

“Tina categorically DENOUNCES and REJECTS any statements or OPERATIONS, public or private, involving a ‘prison break’ or use of force against La Vista or any other CDOC facility in any way,” a post on social media stated, again with the random capitalization.

Perhaps the parole board will take note of those sentiments when the 70-year-old Peters becomes eligible for conditional release in January 2029, a date that just happens to coincide with the end of Trump’s term.

Which seems fitting.

Keep Peters locked up until then, serving as an example and deterrent to others who might consider emulating her by vandalizing the truth and attacking our democracy.